Category: Syriac
Editing old translations
But there was a problem. The translator had chosen to render the Syriac term for the Eastern Romans, ‘Rom’ as ‘Greeks’. This makes sense in 1300; does it make sense in 500? He had also rendered the name of the city of Edessa as ‘Urhay’, which is the name of the modern town on the ruins of Edessa; and Amida as ‘Diyarbekir’ (where the bombing took place recently, where there is a substantial library of Syriac texts, and where there is also, I believe, a US airbase). Again, do these names make sense at this period? Finally there was the usual profusion of Jacobean English: “what befel”, “thou”, etc, which the reader must mentally translate as he goes. The footnotes were studded with Syriac, which I could not sensibly transcribe, so much had to be changed to put the text online.
What should we do? There is always a case for leaving the text alone, and this is the course that I normally prefer. But in this case I chose otherwise; I fixed all three of these things. Was I right to do so?
Syriac text of Eusebius “On the star” now online
Part of one page of the unique manuscript was erased, though.
The text is public domain, so help yourselves and do whatever you like with it.
Programming Right-to-Left Syriac Unicode text on Windows
http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/RightToLeft_Syriac/right_to_left.htm
The same would apply to any RTL language, such as Hebrew and Arabic. Is Ethiopic RTL, I wonder?
A.G. still being used in 1900 in Iraq
2 The Syriac copyist has here added a note to the following effect: ‘From here twelve pages have been torn out and lost from the original by the troops of Bedr Khan Bey, when they captured the district of Das in the year 2154 of the Greeks (= A. D. 1843).’
The Syriac copyist in question must be a modern scribe writing one of the handwritten copies made ca. 1900 of the unique 11th century manuscript, since the editor only had access to these copies. The 11th century ms. was damaged but fortunately not destroyed by the Kurds when they massacred 10,000 Nestorian Christians in 1843. It appears to have been destroyed altogether during WW1.
Alqosh monastery bombed?
More on the lost library of Seert
![Addai Scher](https://i0.wp.com/neonostalgia.com/images/addai.jpg?w=640)
I’ve been trying to pin down data about the loss of the library. I’ve found online a book from 1920 in English which gives eyewitness accounts of how the scholar Addai Scher (left) died, after fleeing his residence with the aid of a sympathetic Turkish officer, he was caught, “looking pale and emaciated”, beaten up by Kurdish irregulars, and then shot several times. Elsewhere the account refers to books being looted from other sites.
This leads to an interesting question: do we know for a fact that these volumes are not to be found somewhere in Kurdistan? A couple of weeks ago I heard from someone who named himself a Kurd, proferring a bible manuscript, “written on skin”. The invitation sounded like a con. George Kiraz recounts how a DVD of images of a manuscript, on black parchment (!) and containing a mixture of crude Syriac and Arabic lettering, was being touted around bishops in Eastern Turkey, so clearly someone has realised that there is a market.
But who are these people? And, more seriously: what books exist in Kurdistan? Saddam Hussein had a collection of manuscripts before his fall, which included Arabic and Kurdish mss. Is there work to be done, to determine what actually exists out there?
Getting a copy of a Syriac scientific manuscript
BNF catalogues of manuscripts all online
http://www.bnf.fr/pages/zNavigat/frame/catalogues_num.htm
I’ve been browsing through the catalogue of Arabic mss. As one might expect, the contents are mainly derived from Coptic or Maronite texts. But what a treasure! Sadly we need not ask whether other major libraries have done the same.
Nestorius again
But the original has perished, destroyed during the First World War during massacres by Turkish troops (again).
All this highlights the fragility of manuscripts, and the importance of photographing the things whenever possible. And it really is possible! Cheap airflights make all sorts of ventures possible.
Last year I did a day-trip to the Rhineland. I got a budget flight from London Stansted airport (about an hour from where I live) to Frankfurt-Hahn airport. Hahn is nowhere near Frankfurt, and is a converted American airbase, about 10 miles from Bernkastel-Kues. I hired a car at the airport and drove there, photographed a manuscript at the Stiftsbibliothek, and returned the same day. It was a long and weary day, but very possible.
Early this year I went even further, this time flying to Salzburg and driving 100 miles east towards Vienna to a monastery named Seitenstetten, photographing a manuscript, and coming back the same day. This was an 18-hour day, and middle age is not an asset here — as the day wore on I started to become uncomfortably conscious that I have an uncle who suffered a heart-attack and was never the same again after doing an 18-hour day of unaccustomed exertion! But it all shows what can be done.